The Nightingale Legacy

From Publishers WeeklyThe second novel in Coulter's Legacy trilogy is a delightful Regency romance brimming with drama, sex and colorful characters. It's 1814, and the young, long-haired, brooding Lord Chilton, Frederick North Nightingale, who briefly appeared in The Wyndham Legacy, is on his way from his Cornish castle, Mount Hawke, to London when he stops at an inn for the night. There, he meets the smart, beautiful and feisty 19-year-old Caroline Derwent-Jones, who has just escaped Roland Ffalkes, her lecherous, inheritance-seeking guardian, and is en route to the Cornish home of her aunt, Eleanor Penrose. North protects Caroline from Ffalkes, who shows up unexpectedly, but she departs before the nobleman can tell her that her aunt, whom he knew, has been murdered. North and Caroline soon meet again, though, and before long he accepts her proposal of marriage-much to the horror of his three misogynist male servants, appalled that the union will break the long-standing tradition of no women living at Mount Hawke. Coulter complicates her story line with a couple of weak plot twists involving a search for local treasure and the murder of several other women (the killer's identity and motive, when finally revealed, strain plausibility), but her witty dialogue and bawdy, eccentric characters add up to an engaging, fan-pleasing story nonetheless. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club selection. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library JournalAt age 19, orphan Catherine Dewent-Jones eagerly anticipates taking control of her own financial affairs. Ffalkes, her greedy and unscrupulous legal guardian, attempts to arrange a marriage for her with his weakling son, Owen. Catherine flees and soon meets Lord Chilton. She is immediately attracted to the handsome but grim and brooding lord. She and Chilton eventually marry to protect her from the devious Ffalkes. After a series of murders, Catherine receives death threats, and the novel lumbers along to its foregone conclusion. While this novel is billed as a sequel to The Wyndham Legacy (Putnam, 1994), the main characters from that story don't make an appearance until late in the book. However, the popularity of Coulter's previous novels makes this a necessary purchase for public libraries with romance readers. [See Prepub Best Sellers, p. 55; Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 8/94.]-Margaret Hanes, Sterling Heights P.L., Mich.--Margaret Hanes, Sterling Heights P.L., Mich.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.